Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Page 8

  “Kiss my ass,” she said.

  “We just need to ask a few questions,” I said.

  “I hired you to find my granddaughter, not ask me a bunch of questions,” she said to me. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

  “She liked you better when you kicked the dog abuser,” I said.

  “I still like that part,” she said. “But why is he here?”

  “Just to be clear, Leonard works with me and the lady you met at the office.”

  “She’s kind of a bitch,” the old lady said.

  “Wow, that is something,” Leonard said. “If you weren’t old and a woman, I’d punch you in the mouth. Brett’s like my sister.”

  “Don’t let the age stop you,” she said. “I can still bounce a little.”

  Leonard actually laughed.

  “Tell you something,” she said. “I can use a cell phone, take photos with it, work a computer, and I can research on it. I don’t need to call someone to change my TV channels, neither.”

  “No one asked you about your technical ability,” Leonard said.

  “Just thought I’d throw it out there,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m past it.”

  “You know, I actually have trouble with the TV-channel part,” I said.

  “Of course you do,” she said. “The trick is to actually read and study the goddamn instructions.”

  “That’s true. I should do that. The questions I want to ask have to do with your granddaughter. I might get some tips on the remote later, but for now, it’s her I want to talk about.”

  “I told you what I know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But would it be okay to ask just a few questions? There’s some things you said that have got me to thinking.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself, child.”

  “It does strain me a bit now and then, but if I lie down I get all perky again.”

  “All right, bring your happy asses inside.”

  We escorted our happy asses inside. The place smelled like old people. Or, in this case, an old person. I guess it comes with the territory. The room was way too warm for this time of year, at least for anyone with any skin on them. It was dark except for a crack of light from a split in the curtains, and in that light dust motes were spinning.

  She poked a skeletal finger at the couch, and we sat down there. It was a couch so seldom used it was hard. Maybe we were the first ones to ever sit on it. I wouldn’t think Ms. Buckner was the sort that attracted a lot of social visits. Any kind of visits, for that matter. So if Frank did know her, it was no surprise she knew she wasn’t the party kind and that’s why my cover was blown. And then Leonard had that whole servicing-the-old-folks bit going. Sometimes I really did want to throttle him. A lot of people wanted to do that. Only thing was, you had to bring reinforcements if you wanted to make that happen.

  “You boys want something to drink?” she said.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  “Look, I’m trying to be a hostess. I’m going to have something.”

  “Sure,” Leonard said. “Anything.”

  “You people like orange pop, don’t you?” She said this to Leonard.

  “We people sho’ do likes us an orange, and you got some peanuts to po’ in them, that makes it right special.”

  “Oh, go to hell. I drink them. Good enough for me, good enough for you. What about you, dipshit?”

  “Dipshit will have an orange,” I said.

  She shuffled out of the room, the friction from her house shoes building up enough static electricity on the carpet she might be able to light her stove with nothing more than a touch of her finger.

  “Goddamn,” Leonard said. “She is just one big ole double-sweet sugar tit.”

  “Ain’t she?”

  We waited there in the smelly room with the slit of light and the spinning dust motes for a long time. This would be the crack of light at the window where she looked out and saw what was going on across the street, where she used her cell phone and transferred the video to her tablet with her high level of technical skill. She was probably drinking an orange soda while she did it, like Leonard’s “people.”

  Finally she came back. She had three orange sodas in bottles on a tray she was holding with wobbly hands. When she came over, Leonard and I rescued our drinks, and she took hold of hers with one hand and just let the tray drop to the floor with a clang and a clatter.

  “They make those damn bottles too heavy,” she said.

  She collapsed in a chair. She was breathing hard, and gradually she started breathing slower. Damn if I didn’t think she was going to quit on us right there. But she finally came to herself, took a swig of the orange, said, “What’s the questions?”

  “You said Sandy had done good, gone to school, all that, but then you said something that kind of stuck with me. About her maybe living too high on the hog and having too much money. Did you let something out you didn’t mean to?”

  “I don’t know I meant to or not,” she said. “I say most anything comes to my mind these days. I thought I was pretty clear I suspected shenanigans. Damn. This orange is tangy, isn’t it?”

  “Quite tangy,” Leonard said.

  “So was there something?” I asked again.

  “I know she was doing a bit of leg spreading for someone, making some money from it. You know, had a sugar daddy.” She paused. “Maybe more than one. I’m not judging her. When I was younger I could do more tricks with a good long dick than a cowboy could with a waxed lasso.”

  I was feeling a little ill.

  She saw it on my face. “Oh, hell, don’t be such a prude. Look here.” She got up and took her sweet time picking up a thick photo album on one of the end tables by a stuffed chair. She brought it over as if she were carrying the Ten Commandments down from the mountain, put it in my lap, went back to her seat, and did the whole breathing thing again. While she regrouped, I opened it.

  After I had been looking a few minutes, Leonard leaned over to look, too. She said, “That’s me. Nearly all those photos. I did some modeling. All we were showing back then in public was some leg and shoulders. In private men got to see a little more if I was in the mood. I was in the mood a lot. I liked pecker the way a chicken likes corn. When you get my age, look back, you got to wonder what that was all about. When the juices dry up the brain works better, at least in some ways. You know, I was actually in Hollywood. Believe that shit? In the old days. It was too vulgar for me, and I gave it up.”

  “That must have been some seriously nasty shit out there, then,” Leonard said.

  “What I’m trying to tell you.”

  I flipped through the photos. My God, even with the fashions then, the hairdos, she was one hot number. Considering the level of the photography at that time, she probably looked even better. She actually did look like a movie star, though a little short for a model. Still, she was the kind back then who would stop a man in his tracks the way a brick schoolhouse will stop a semi.

  “I was in some movies,” she said, as if she were reading my mind. “Some of those photos I’m a teenager. Some of the other shots, my twenties, then my thirties. I tried to settle down later, when the bit parts in the pictures played out for me. I was mostly the girl second to the left in a film with a couch audition on Sunday afternoons. I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag, but I was hell on that couch. That kept me working, if not in any big way.”

  “And settling down didn’t work?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t keep my legs crossed. I was with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that had pants, and I would have been fine with a man in a kilt. Couldn’t help myself. I liked the men. Now not so much. Nobody too much. Except Sandy.”

  “So you’re saying Sandy couldn’t keep her legs crossed, either?” Leonard asked.

  “I couldn’t because I greatly loved sex, and I think Sandy did, too. But unlike her, I didn’t do it for money. Oh, I got a coat and some diamonds now and then, a dinner, a play or a
movie. A job. But hell. I was going to screw them anyway, so no big deal. By the time I did settle down and get married and had a child, I was almost too tired to fuck.”

  “I think that’s a very modern way to look at things,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Dontcha know it,” she said, pushing her false teeth forward with her tongue. When she relaxed they jumped back into her mouth like a free throw. “Sandy, though, she might have been doing a little of the other, fucking for the buck. I got that impression. Then suddenly she didn’t have money, and then my money went missing. I know she got it.”

  “You think this had to do with the car lot?” I asked.

  “Expensive cars like those don’t bring the cheapies around. So I figure that’s how she started selling the old hairy triangle for the big bucks, and then somewhere along the way she either got greedy or got broke, because she played it stupid, took money from me. I like to think she didn’t mean to take it forever, that she would have paid me back.”

  I could see the old woman thinking about that. I believe she decided it was too sentimental. She added, “I don’t really give a damn. I can’t spend money in hell.”

  “Did you ever meet someone named Frank?” I asked. “A woman?”

  “Named Frank?”

  “She goes by Frank or Frankie.”

  “No,” she said. “I never met her, but I think Sandy mentioned her once or twice. The name Frank rings a bell. But then at my age everything seems slightly familiar and at the same time unfamiliar.”

  I looked back at the book of photos, closed it up, looked up to say something but didn’t. Leonard looked at me. I looked at him. I placed the book on the couch beside me.

  I drank the orange pop. I was hot, and it was good. Leonard swigged his. We wouldn’t want to walk out and leave the bottles full—didn’t want her to think we didn’t appreciate it, the old witch. The clock on the wall beat out the minutes. We got up to leave and went out quietly, because she had gone to sleep in her chair.

  13

  Do you think while she was asleep we should have just gone on and smothered her and set her house on fire?” Leonard said.

  “You are not a nice man, Leonard.”

  “How about I steal the jockey while she’s sleeping?”

  “It would look very nice in your new apartment,” I said.

  “Better at the dump.”

  I drove Leonard to our house so he could get his car. He surprised me by just going home. I guess that business with John had worn him down a bit. Not to mention the unpleasant old lady. He said he was going to see if he could stand to watch Road House again, as that usually cheered him up.

  Of course he could. It was his favorite movie. I think he had a crush on Patrick Swayze.

  I drove to the office. The lady who owned the bicycle shop was outside working on a bicycle chain. She had on those great blue-jean shorts, bless her little heart. Her legs were long and brown, and her hair was long and blond. I studied her as I walked to the stairway. She gave me a smile. It was one of those that said, “You’re such a nice old guy.”

  It was chilly inside. Brett liked to keep it almost as cold as the office at the car lot. First few days she had it turned down to save money, but East Texas summer heat can make you less thrifty. Sometimes someone from up north will come down to East Texas and say, “It’s so hot, but living here all your life, I guess you get used to it.”

  No. You don’t. You live in an air-conditioned house, dart from it to an air-conditioned car, then drive to an air-conditioned place. You spend time outside only when necessary. Some summers it’s so hot dog crap fries on the ground. I used to work a lot of field work, but not anymore, and I hope never again. It was hard to believe that I had grown up with only a window fan.

  Brett was at the desk chair, and Buffy was on the couch. Buffy raised her head to make sure I wasn’t that other guy, the asshole who had kicked her.

  Brett said, “Hey, we got a couple other jobs. Seem easy to me. Checking on a few things people want to hire us to do they could do themselves but are too lazy to do.”

  “That’s good. I guess.”

  “Honey, it’s good. We can always use the money.”

  “Sure. I was just thinking this current job might be a bit more demanding than expected.”

  “You thought it would be easy?”

  “I thought the old lady would want to give up when we didn’t find her granddaughter right away. I don’t think so now.”

  “You talk to Cason?”

  “I did. We’re set.”

  “And your talk with Lilly Buckner—I bet that was a soul-enriching experience.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But I like her. I can’t help myself. I like her because she’s got spirit and spunk and hasn’t lived a life she feels a need to apologize for. I think she lived a tough life and was tough enough to live it and not care what anyone thought about it. Besides, she drinks orange soda. I like orange soda.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Me, either. I forgot. I had one today at her house.”

  “How did she and Leonard do together?”

  “Like mother and son.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I opened the refrigerator, took out a bottled water. We emptied a bottle, we filled it up in the sink, and cooled it in the fridge. It was the cool we liked. The water is the same, far as I’m concerned. Water that comes bottled—hell, fish shit in it. Ducks shit in it. Birds flying over shit in it. This way I can buy one bottle of water and use the bottle for a while without the payment.

  I had marked the bottles with a marker. One mark for my bottle, two for Brett’s, three for Leonard’s, and sometimes I drew a smiley face on his. The dog drank straight tap water we ran into her bowl.

  “There’s something else,” Brett said as I sat down in a client chair to nurse my water.

  “Oh?”

  Brett’s face had a look on it like maybe she had been sitting on a tack and had just decided to pull it out.

  “A girl came by,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “She wanted to see you.”

  “One of the cases?”

  “No. But she knows a lot about you and us and that you were working for Marvin before I took over. She said I was pretty.”

  “You are.”

  “I told her you would be back, but I wasn’t sure when, and it was best to either call or come by. Call would be best. I gave her the office number.”

  “Not the home or cell?”

  “No. I didn’t like that idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think this has to do with the car-lot business?”

  Brett shook her head.

  “Do I know her?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You’re being very mysterious.”

  “Am I?” Brett said.

  “You are.”

  “I guess I just don’t know what to think about it. She wouldn’t tell me anything other than she had to see you.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Brett hesitated on that one. “She was young. I’m not sure how young. Twenty-five at the oldest, maybe a year or two on either side of that. She’s well taken care of, but a little too thin, I thought. Like maybe she’s missing some meals.”

  “On purpose?”

  “I don’t think so. She was maybe five nine, though she had on these wedge shoes with big heels, so I’m not sure. She was dressed nice, but nothing fancy. Older clothes well taken care of. Has jet-black hair and is dark-skinned, kind of Hispanic or Indian-looking, American Indian. I think maybe she dyed her hair, though my guess is it’s pretty dark to begin with. She had that brunette look about her.”

  “If you say so. Whatever that is.”

  “She also had very nice teeth.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “If we need her to bite off a bottle cap, sh
e’s ready.”

  Brett said, “She had pretty gray eyes.”

  “Okay. I still don’t know who she is. Did she leave a name?”

  “She said she was called Chance, but she’d rather talk to you. So I didn’t get a last name. She left, and I watched out the window. She talked to the lady at the bicycle shop a moment, then went out to a bicycle and rode away.”

  “She bought a bicycle while she was here?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Brett said. “I said she rode away on one. I assume she rode up on it as well. Do you know anyone called Chance?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t say that I do. Mysterious, no doubt.”

  “I thought so, too,” Brett said. “Buffy liked her. Actually got off the couch, came over, and licked her hand.”

  “Did she seem to know the dog?”

  “I didn’t get that impression. I don’t think it was anyone working for the dog kicker, if that’s what you mean. A daughter. A wife.”

  “I thought it might have been,” I said.

  “Didn’t seem that way at all. I think she just liked dogs, and the dog liked her. Some people are like that.”

  I nodded.

  “Besides,” Brett said, “had she tried to take our Buffy, I’d have kicked her scrawny little ass.”

  Brett tried to smile after that, but the smile dissolved, like ice melting. I could see she was bothered by something. I went over and put my arm around her. “Here, now. You act like she’s death come to visit.”

  “I know. I can’t explain it. But somehow I think in some way she might be in trouble. That she might need us.”

  “She should have said something.”

  “I think for whatever reason she’s waiting for you.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that remark, and I let it lie.

  We hung around for a while, me sort of hoping the dark-haired, gray-eyed girl on the bicycle would come around and solve the puzzle.

  She didn’t.

  Leonard came over a couple hours later. He said Road House was as wonderfully bad as he remembered it. That was his way of saying he actually liked it a whole lot. I also knew that sometimes watching that movie was how he got his center back. It may be a hokey movie about a bouncer who has raised bouncing to a high art and reads Jim Harrison, but to tell the truth, in a way, Leonard was just that kind of guy. Only more dangerous. He made the characters in the movie look like the masters of the slap fight.